


I wandered lonely

by Luthor



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: AU, Abusive Parent, F/F, Family Drama, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Underage Drinking, aged down AU, pre-cult / no-cult AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14562297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: Hope County, Montana, pre-game. Faith Seed before she was Faith Seed, the Deputy before she became the Deputy.What if history had a way of correcting itself?Rachel Jessop's life is stagnant and stifled, until 'Rook' moves to town and shakes things up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! just a quick note to say that this piece will be updated as and when i can update it. it's not a priority, so much as it's been eating away at me for too long and i needed to write it out. it's not going to be very well written - i'm not taking it too seriously, just having fun. consider ye warned. :)

Rachel Jessop is ankle-deep in dirt when her father’s apprentice first arrives.

That he’d taken an apprentice at all had come as no small surprise, as half the boys at her school had asked for work before the start of summer, and he’d turned every one of them down. Rachel herself knew she only had a position at Jessop’s Conservatory because she was his daughter, and Mr. Jessop didn’t believe in wasting away her summer without a job. She’d applied at several diners, but her father had liked neither the working hours nor the distance.

This way, he can keep her right beneath his nose, where she’s less likely to cause trouble.

It’s not exactly like he needs the hands, either; her father’s always had a steady work force at the Conservatory, many of which have worked there since before Rachel can remember. They’re getting older, she supposes, and the work isn’t letting up any. Her father’s always said that it’s a young man’s job.

She’s sitting on a turned over vegetable crate with her bare feet beneath a hose when the truck pulls up – something years old and not unfamiliar to Hope County. The baby blue paint is flaking and vaguely rusted in areas, but the engine sounds to be in good condition, from what Rachel knows about engines.

She’s content to ignore the new start, as she does the rest of her father’s workers, when a pair of boots step into her field of vision. Dark boots, scuffed and obviously worn for their steel-capped support; she imagines they’re ancient and just as reliable as when they were first bought.

“This is Jessop’s Conservatory, right?”

The voice surprises Rachel out of a witty remark.

She cranes her head up and squints past the sun. There’s a girl standing before her who can’t be much older than she is, in faded jeans and a tucked in polo shirt. Rachel tilts her head to one side and tries to see the stranger’s eyes behind the shades. “ _You’re_ my dad’s new apprentice?”

The stranger’s laugh is more of a bark, short and mildly offended, if Rachel’s reading her right – and she _is_. A hand comes up and pulls the glasses from her face. “Apprentice?” The way she says the word makes Rachel suppose her father has either exaggerated at the dinner table, or over-promised in a job interview. “More of just a hired hand, really, for a few shifts here and there. I take it that means I’m in the right place, then?”

Rachel sighs and shuts off the water.

When she stands, it’s in a puddle of mud, and she’s really no cleaner than she had been previously.

(She curls her toes in the dirt and doesn’t care, either way.)

“Yeah, this is the right place. What’s your name?”

“Rook,” she replies, and Rachel’s reaction is instant and unforgiving. Rook grins like she’d been expecting it, anyway. “People call me ‘Rook’.”

“Not much of a name,” Rachel mutters, not unkindly, and pads dirty footprints into an open shed to put the hose away. The brief reprieve from the scalding daylight eases her nerves, some; she runs her sleeve along the sweat at the back of her neck and squints out at Rook as though she can’t weigh her up. It’s a specialty of Rachel’s, usually, something she’s come to depend on. She doesn’t like it when it doesn’t work.

“You just moved here?”

“Just,” Rook nods.

“From where?” Rachel asks, but Rook’s smile hints at secrets, and she doesn’t have the patience right now to unravel them. It’s too damn hot and she has work to do. “Did you come alone or with family?”

“Alone,” Rook says, stepping closer. She uses the doorframe of the shed as a leaning post and crosses her arms, still holding her sunglasses. “I didn’t catch your name, though? From the way you’re interrogating me, I’d think you owned the place.” A muscle twitches in Rachel’s cheek. “Mr. Jessop mentioned he had a daughter.”

“Mhm, well done, you’ve got me all figured out.”

Rook’s smile doesn’t falter.

“Why’d you move here, anyway? Nobody _moves_ here… plenty of people move away.”

Rachel re-ties her ponytail as she waits for an answer. She’d hate to admit it, but she’s curious. She can’t remember the last people who moved out here, although she’s sure they were middle-aged and owned property elsewhere. She watches Rook for a sign, for a hint of what lies in her past, but there’s only those peaceful, easy brown eyes staring back at her, and a slack smile.

It’s infuriating.

“I have my reasons, I guess,” Rook shrugs, and it’s obvious that that’s as far as her answer will go.

“Everybody does,” Rachel agrees, and steps towards the door. Rook leans out of the way to let her pass. “You’d best find my dad before he starts to wonder where you are. He hates it when people are late, or,” and she picks up her discarded footwear from the mud-puddle that’s already drying, and twirls around to send Rook a pointed look, “when they dawdle at their job.”

Rook tips her head in understanding and tucks her sunglasses over the collar of her shirt. The Jessops’ house sits ahead in the distance, impossible to miss, and Rook makes that her first port-of-call. She’s had exactly one informal interview with Mr. Jessop and she doesn’t doubt that his daughter is painting an accurate character reference of him.

“Noted,” she says, and nods her head as though to leave.

“It’s Rachel, by the way— my name.”

Rook turns back with a smile that Rachel is learning comes easy to her.

“Go on,” Rachel urges her, “go and find him. Dawdling, remember?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’d hate to get you into trouble.”

 

Rachel watches Rook from a distance.

She hadn’t noticed so much before, but it’s obvious from the way that she lifts the equipment that Rook is built for a hands-on job like this – that she most likely has a background in it or something similar. She is subtle muscle, the kind that comes from hard work instead of pride in appearance. The revelation fuels Rachel’s curiosity further, until she’s caught staring by Rook herself.

In the distance, Rook raises a hand in greeting.

Rachel turns quickly back to her work.

 

Rook is tired and vaguely aching by the end of her first day at Jessop’s Conservatory.

She imagines Mr. Jessop had put her through her paces to see what she was capable of, and that not every day will be as strenuous, but this _is_ what she’d signed up for. She knew what the job was, and it brought in enough money to keep her afloat for the time being. It’ll do for now, is the important thing, although she can’t help but hope that not every day will be as rough on her weary body as today has been.

When she returns to the trailer park at the end of the day, Rook is sunburned and exhausted.

It had never been her first choice for accommodation; aside from the everyday prejudices, the park wasn’t in the best condition, and at least one neighbour had a penchant for heavy rock at unforgiving hours of the night. In short, it was affordable, and that’s about all the persuasion Rook needed to consider it an option.

She kicks her boots off at the trailer door and strips her clothes with lacklustre grace. She has exactly enough time to eat and shower before her body succumbs to fatigue, and her dreams are uninteresting and forgotten as soon as she wakes again, only to repeat the day.

Like this, she spends three stifling weeks in Hope County.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunday catches Rook unawares.

It’s not often that she has spare time on her hands; when she’s not working at the Jessops’, she’s finding spare jobs here and there to pick up for cash-in-hand. Sunday is different. All of Hope’s County seems to stop in respect of the day of rest, the roads clear, the people relax, even the wind drops and infrequent cloud cover eases off the height of the sun’s burn.

With nothing but time on her hands, Rook wakes early and packs a fishing bag.

(She has no patience for fishing, but it gives her an excuse to dip her feet in the Henbane River and drink beer before noon, as the old tradition goes.)

Her truck is the only vehicle on the road for the first few miles, humming through the hills at a languid pace with her music on low and her windows wide open. With the wind in her hair, she could close her eyes going downhill and believe that she’s flying. (She’s _almost_ reckless enough to try it.)

The closest bait-and-tackle shop still eats into a twenty minute drive, but it’s closer to the river, at least, and Rook figures she could do with the walk. She parks her truck there and abandons it for the day. With a rod in hand and fresh bait in her backpack, she begins the short walk down to the river. The paths this way up the mountain are more like worn dirt tracks than roads, and she has to ease her balance down one particularly precarious slope until she back on level ground.

She’s just about to begin an ill-advised perilous descent, when somebody calls her name.

Rook stops before she falls and glances around, shouldering her rod.

From a distance, almost lost to the tall grass and the shade of a tree that she’s sitting beneath, Rachel Jessop waves a hand. It’s early enough that Rook blinks before she trusts her sight, and then makes her way over. Grass tickles her feet as she nears, and Rook almost regrets the flipflops, but just ahead of her in a circle of flattened lawn she can see that Rachel is as barefoot as she often finds her.

“You’ll get ants in your pants this way,” Rook says in place of greeting, but Rachel only pokes out her tongue and closes the sketchbook in her lap. “It’s a little early for a walk, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t gone for a walk,” Rachel says, like it’s obvious, “we have church. I just got a head start.”

“Sure.”

“I like to come out here early, before everyone arrives. It’s nice and quiet.”

“Oh,” Rook nods, and raises her hands in semi-apology. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding, I called you over here.” She bites down on her bottom lip to keep her smile from growing, and takes a sudden interest in what Rook is carrying. She tips her head to one side and all of her blonde hair falls over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you liked fishing.”

Rook looks down at the rod in her hand like she's just remembered that she’s carrying it.

“Well, I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me, huh?” She winks, and it’s probably too much, but Rachel laughs and so she’ll call it an accomplishment. “I don’t, though. Not really. I’m not really a patient person, my energy tends to frighten the fish off, more than anything. But I’ve got food, beer, and music, so there’s not much that can go wrong.”

“Famous last words,” Rachel points out, but there’s a look on her face that Rook wants to call longing.

“You could come with me,” it forces her to ask, and only once she’s said the words does she realise how much she’d enjoy that, actually. She only really knows Rachel from work, but aside from Sharky (and he’s plenty fun, don’t get her wrong), Rook hasn’t exactly had the time to go around making friends. It’s not that she’s lonely, per se, but she wouldn’t mind some company.

She wouldn’t mind Rachel’s company, especially... and by the look on Rachel’s face, she’s not alone in that thought.

“I can’t,” Rachel says, and Rook shakes the thoughts from her mind like dandelion seeds. “Church.”

“Right, church.”

“I sing in the choir,” she adds, like she needs to explain herself, like she has any choice in the matter. “They’d notice if I weren’t there.” She looks quietly disappointed by the fact, until an idea sparks to mind, and her excitement is contagious for Rook—up until she speaks. “Why don’t you come with us, though? Father Thomas is always welcoming new people.”

“Ah,” Rook starts, and by the tone of her voice alone Rachel knows that her offer was in vain. A little ache begins in her chest, heavy like a plum seed. It sinks down, down into her stomach. “Thanks, but… it’s not really my scene.”

“You don’t attend church at all?” Rachel asks, and tries to make it sound like it isn’t a big deal. It’s not, really. It isn’t.

“Nope,” Rook agrees. “Me and churches don’t mix well.”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right one,” Rachel says, but she’s pushing, now, she can feel herself doing it and she takes a deep breath so that she will _stop_. She shrugs her shoulders as if to bat the suggestion away, and smiles at Rook like she’s sorry. She isn't exactly sure what for, but she feels it.

Rook opens her mouth to speak, but the calling of a name from a distance draws both of their attention.

Above them on the hillside, the Jessops in their Sunday best wave Rachel over as they join the congregation. Rachel stands with a flourish, hurrying her sketchbook and pencils into her messenger bag. Rook steps back and watches her gather up her shoes – little heels that she certainly didn’t scale the hillside in. Her dress is white and delicate and smudged with grass stains that Rachel seems not to notice, or else doesn’t care.

“Sorry, I’d better go,” she says, already stepping backwards through the long grass. “Enjoy your fishing—or, your sitting by the river eating and drinking and listening to music.”

“You know I will,” Rook grins, and waves her off.

She stands in place as Rachel scampers back up the hill, stopping only once she’s at the top of it to put her shoes back on. How she hasn’t been bitten by a snake yet, Rook’ll never know. When she steps back out from beneath the shade of the tree, the sun feels stronger than it had before, but a mustard-flower breeze blows hair out of Rook’s face.

Rod in hand, she continues her path to the river.


	3. Chapter 3

Lunch at Jessop Conservatory is a pre-packed burrito from the truck stop Rook had passed on her morning commute.

She’s usually better prepared for the day, but her early starts and late finishes are beginning to take their toll on her. She takes her lunch out with a flask of sweet tea provided by one of the older workers at the Conservatory (a rare treat, and one she never passes up on), and walks a ways from the greenhouses and the equipment sheds until all she can hear is the wind and the bugs.

At mid-day, the sun is blistering above, but Rook tucks herself into the shade of a tree.

She has exactly an hour for lunch, and is half-tempted to spend half of it napping. As she’s weighing up the pros-and-cons of returning to work vaguely better rested, but groggy, a figure plants themselves down by her side without warning. Rook is less surprised when she turns to see Rachel, cross-legged and with a leafy bowl of salad in her lap. Rachel is three mouthfuls into her lunch before she realises that Rook is watching her.

She blinks, swallows what’s in her mouth, and looks down to Rook’s half-eaten burrito.

She tips her bowl forward, and a cherry tomato almost tumbles loose.

“Do you want some?”

Rook eyes the bowl. “Not even slightly.”

Rachel laughs and bites into a cherry tomato with relish, as if to say, _good, more for me!_ A trail of juice slips past the corner of her mouth, and Rook loses the next five seconds of her life watching her carefully clean the trail it leaves up again, licking her fingers clean afterwards. Rachel pops the remaining half of tomato past her lips and Rook finds the strength to stop staring.

(It’s not that she’s completely useless around pretty girls, it’s just _been a while_ , is all.)

“So,” she says, and clears her throat, “aside from working the family business, what do you do around here?”

Rachel looks unsure to answer, for a moment.

“You mean, for fun?”

“Sure,” Rook shrugs. “For fun, or… hell, for anything. I never see you anywhere other than here or going to your church.”

“I go to school, I guess. I mean, it’s my final year coming up, so there’s that.”

Rook nods her head, encouraging more.

“I suppose,” Rachel begins, like she isn’t sure how much she should say, “I don’t really go out a lot around town. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but it’s not exactly _thriving_ here. There are some almost-decent places across town, but it’s a long drive to get there, and my dad doesn’t like me using the truck.”

Rook takes another bite of her burrito, nods her head. Her opinion of Mr. Jessop has not improved in the weeks since she’s moved here, but she doesn’t have to like him. She’s just here to get paid.

“Aside from _that_ ,” Rachel sighs, stretching her legs out in front of her (her feet as bare as the day she was born, to nobody’s surprise), “I suppose you can say my life is extremely boring right now.”

“You just need to get out more,” Rook tells her. “You’ve got friends, right?”

“Not really.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No, it’s true,” Rachel smiles, but it is wry and vaguely self-deprecating. She nibbles on a carrot stick and shrugs her shoulders, speaking again once her mouth is empty. “I have a friend who I was pretty close to, but we don’t talk anymore. Tracey has lots of new friends and they all hate me, so…”

“Something happen?” Rook asks, although the answer is obvious. Rachel nods her head, anyway.

“Something happened.”

Rook wants to press further, but she’s unsure of how much she can probe. She’s curious, yes, but she also doubts that Rachel will open up about whatever this is just yet. She’s fine with that. She opens her mouth to change the topic, when voices in the distance start growing loud enough for them to make out the conversation.

“…to give her more responsibility, she’s not a child anymore—”

“She’s barely even seventeen—”

Rook recognises the Jessops’ voices in an instant, but Rachel’s hand on her arm stops her from speaking. They’re close, far too close, just above them on a slight incline and probably can’t see her or Rachel here in the shade of the tree. Rook holds perfectly still and wills them to walk further on, to not discover them here inadvertently eavesdropping on whatever clearly private conversation this is.

Beside her, Rachel is stock-still. The expression on her face tells Rook that this isn’t the first conversation like this that she’s overheard, and it certainly won’t be the last.

“You have to trust her,” Mrs. Jessop says, shrill enough that Rachel’s hand tightens in her sleeve.

“ _Trust_ her? You know what happened the last time I _trusted_ her—”

“ _One time_ , Rick, and she’s shown how sorry she—”

“…not having this conversation.”

“Rick. _Ri—_ ”

The exchange stops with a gasp, and Rook’s entire body tenses in preparation to spring—  

Rachel’s hand on her arm, dragging her back, is the only thing that keeps her seated. Rook turns to her in horrified confusion, but the voice of Mr. Jessop is muffled, now, growing weaker as he draws back to the Conservatory. There’s the faint sound of spluttering, of coughing like when you’ve inhaled a mouthful of water, _choking_ , and Rook feels her stomach twist.

Beside her, eyes-wide, Rachel shakes her head, _begs_ her to stay quiet.

She’s the kind of afraid that roots Rook in place by her side on instinct, the kind of afraid that makes Rook put a hand on her back and sit with her quietly until it’s only them, the wind, and the sound of the bugs again. She can’t just let this happen, she can’t just _sit there_ and listen to this happening and not _do something_.

(Rook hates herself for it, but she does.)

 

When they return to the Conservatory, Rook spots Mrs. Jessop by the doorway of their home, looking out on the greenhouse where Rachel is working.

There’s a new silk scarf knotted deceptively around her neck.


	4. Chapter 4

“Easy there, sweetheart, we’re parking the dinghies not playin’ bumper carts.”

Rook turns back to Addie Drubman with an apologetic smile-come-grimace.

“There’s a trick to it,” Addie continues, sliding a dinghy perfectly into place alongside another two. She steps out with practiced ease and ties the boat to the dock to keep it from drifting. “You’re there to steer the boat, don’t lean too hard on the accelerator. Let the water guide you in.”

Rook nudges the boat forward, as instructed.

She at least reaches the deck, and bounces back off of it hard enough to almost unseat herself. Addie lunges for the boat’s loose docking rope with deceptive strength and ties her up before the boat can drift back out into the lake. As far as work goes, Rook’s done a worse job of things before– but _still_. She climbs out of the boat on legs she wishes felt more stable beneath her, and rests both hands on top of her cap-covered head.

( _Deep breaths, deep breaths, you didn’t almost just crash several boats worth more than your entire life…_ )

“Thanks, Addie, maybe I’ll get the hang of it eventually.”

“We’ll keep trying,” Addie winks, standing again. She hoots a sigh and wipes the sweat from her brow, although Rook doesn’t doubt that _she’s_ the one who’s more tired out from the exertion. “You treat your boat like a lady and she’ll treat you right back, isn’t that right?”

“Uh, sure…”

“Huh, maybe I pegged you wrong, Rook.”

“What?”

“No matter,” Addie grins, and off she sets again down the deck. “Come on, sugar, you’re far from done workin’ if you expect to get paid for this.”

Righting her cap, Rook licks the sweat from her upper lip and follows suit.

“Yes, ma’am…”

 

They break past noon and eat anchovy sandwiches with their legs dangling over the edge of the deck, too high up for their feet to touch the water.

The day has not been an easy one, but it’s kept Rook’s mind busy, and that’s never done her any harm before. She’s the first to finish, having a habit of wolfing her food down before her meal can be interrupted, but she sits a while with Addie and an old stereo playing country songs behind them. In the near distance, Xander enters downward dog and Addie wolf whistles, on-cue.

“That is one beautiful man,” she says, and Rook snorts and leans back on both hands, wagging her feet beneath her. “You haven’t found nobody you’re interested in, sweetheart? I heard you been spending time with little Sharky Boshaw— the two of you never, you know…?”

Rook’s barking laughter is, at least, more amused than offended.

“Nah, I didn’t think so,” Addie agrees, dusting the bread crumbs from her lap. “Frankly, darlin’, you can do better, but I reckon you know that already.”

“Sure do,” Rook grins, and she’s got nothing against Sharky, not really. Not until it’s 2am and he’s still got his music playing, anyway. “Trust me, that ship is going nowhere, and I doubt he’d be interested even if it was.”

“Mm,” Addie nods, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Your interests lie elsewhere, though, don’t they?”

Rook goes quiet.

She isn’t sure what she can and can’t say in front of Addie, firstly because she’s her sometimes-employer, and secondly because this is rural Montana and Rook knows better than to open her mouth about certain topics. She’d learned that lesson early. Beside her, Addie smiles in a way that’s as inviting as it is sympathetic, and Rook relaxes. Sometimes, it’s easier to force herself to lower boundaries and deal with the consequences later, than it is not to lower boundaries at all.

“Yeah, I guess they do.”

Addie nods, and her smile is knowing and a little smug at having guessed correctly.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” she says, and takes a long sip of lemonade. “You just be careful who you set your sights on.” Rook would passively agree with her, but there’s a look on Addie’s face that begets questioning. Addie gives her the chance to work it out for herself, but when Rook doesn’t speak, continues, “You’ve taken quite the shine to the Jessops’ girl, haven’t you?”

A non-existent chill runs down the collar of Rook’s shirt.

“Rachel?”

Addie nods her head.

“No, that’s— I just work there,” Rook tries to explain, but from the look on Addie’s face, she isn’t buying it. “We’re friends, I guess, but only because we have to see each other every day, you know?” It doesn’t feel good to say it, it doesn’t feel good to say _any_ of it. “There’s nothing there, never will be, I am sure of that.”

“Well, alright.” Addie does not look convinced. “As long as you’re sure.”

“I am, really.”

“Probably for the best,” Addie sighs. “Her daddy’s a real piece of work, you know?”

Rook’s feet stop kicking.

“Yeah,” she says, and god does she wish she didn’t. “Yeah, I know.”

Rook forces herself to stop talking before she reveals more. She looks out at the lake and breathes deeply, lets it out again with a sigh. She feels no better for it, and so tries again. Beside her, Addie pushes herself to her feet and gathers their plates and glasses. She pats Rook on the shoulder as she passes.

“Come on, honey, back to work.”

 

That night, Rook gets a phone call from an unknown number.

She’s sitting in her trailer with a staticky radio on and the windows open wide, welcoming in the cooler night air. She’s just showered and is half-way dressed for bed in a pair of pants and an over-sized t-shirt, and stares at her phone screen for a moment before she accepts the call. She answers with a cautious, “hello?”

“Rook,” the voice on the other end of the line whispers, with no small amount of relief. “I didn’t think you were going to answer.”

“Rachel? Is everything alright?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line that makes Rook straighten up.

“Yeah,” finally, and she relaxes again. “Yes, it’s fine, I just finally got my phone back and wanted to talk to somebody.”

“I didn’t know you had my number,” Rook says, clearly fishing for an answer.

“My dad had it saved. I found it.”

“Resourceful,” Rook grins, and settles back down on her couch. “What did you wanna talk about?”

There’s more silence on the other end of the line, followed by shuffling. Rook imagines Rachel climbing into bed, ducking her head beneath the covers to keep their whispered conversation from being discovered. She feels giddy and anxious just imagining it, and lowers her own speaking volume to match.

“Nothing in particular,” Rachel says after a pause. “Just didn’t want to be on my own for a while, if that makes sense.”

“It does. It really does.”

Rachel falls quiet after that, for long enough that Rook loses herself in thought. It’s late, late enough that she could fall asleep within ten minutes if she let herself, but she fights to stay awake for just a little longer. She’ll regret it tomorrow, when she’s up early and back at work again. Rachel will regret it, too, probably.

“Rook…?”

Rook masks a yawn behind her hand. “Yeah?”

“Would you… are we friends?”

She blinks.

“Uh, yeah,” she says, and clears her throat. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

“You’re not just saying that because I’m the one who asked you?”

“Nope,” Rook promises, popping the ‘p’. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Okay,” Rachel whispers, but Rook can hear the smile in her voice. “Do you want to do something this weekend, then?”

“Sure, like what?”

“You’ll think of something,” Rachel tells her, and Rook agrees without thought, as she has a terrible habit of doing when it comes to Rachel. “Good. I’m glad I called you.”

“I’m glad you called me, too,” Rook answers honestly, and she’s the biggest fool she knows, it’s true, but lord if she can’t help herself sometimes. “You should get some sleep, now, we’re up early.”

Rachel agrees without argument.

(Fool that she is, Rook would welcome it, if just to speak with her a little longer.) 


	5. Chapter 5

Hollyhock Saloon is almost empty when they arrive, but that’s how Rook prefers it.

They take a corner table indoors and order burgers and fries, a shake and a bottle of diet soda for Rook, who finishes her food before Rachel has cleared half her plate. (She carries the conversation while she waits for Rachel to finish eating, stealing the occasional fry, cracking the occasional stupid joke.) It’s quiet, but it’s comfortable, even when a group of six elderly bikers fill up a bench in the centre of the room and order in an early round.

“Your turn,” Rook says, playing with her bottle, and Rachel chews on a fry in thought.

“Okay,” she says after a pause, and clears her throat. “I have never… ridden a horse.”

Rook leans considerably closer into the table, folding her arms across it, like if she can just get close enough she’ll spot the lie in Rachel’s eyes. She’s not been overly successful in their game, so far, and has a feeling that her luck isn’t about to improve. She looks from Rachel’s bright green eyes, to the smirk on her lips, and wonders if it’s luck at all…

“Lie,” Rook says, sure that she’s right, but Rachel’s triumphant smile makes her guffaw. “Seriously? You live in butt-fuck country Montana, how have you never ridden a horse before?”

Rachel laughs and pops another fry past her lips. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“You don’t like horses?”

“Mm-mn, too big.”

“There was a moose in your backyard last week,” Rook points out. “How are horses scarier than that?”

“Moose are _so_ different,” Rachel says, with the most conviction that Rook has ever heard come from her. “They’re incredible animals, they’re— _majestic_. They walk around like giant forest spirits, like they’re perfectly benevolent if you keep your distance, but if you get too close...” She shrugs her shoulders, like it’s obvious, like Rook should _know_. “Nobody’s out here trying to domesticate and ride moose, they already know it’ll end badly.”

“I could name a few people who’d try…”

“Not the point,” Rachel smirks. “Horses are different.”

“Fine,” Rook concedes, and takes a swig of soda to hide her smile. “My turn, then?”

Rachel makes a hand gesture as if to say, _please, move this conversation along, stop embarrassing me_. She defers back to her smoothie, holding the glass in one hand and her straw in the other, as if she can hide her own smile if she distracts herself for long enough. It’s ineffective, at worst, and adorable at best. Rook shakes her head at herself and wonders, briefly, if she’s doing it on purpose.

“Alright.” Rook takes a breath to clear her thoughts. “I have never crashed my car—”

“Lie.”

“ _Come on_ ,” Rook laughs, hands hitting the table. “Seriously?”

Rachel bites her lip and shrugs. “You’re too easy to read.”

“You’re cheating,” Rook counters, mock-glaring at her over the table, but it only serves to broaden Rachel’s smile. “I’m a very careful driver.”

“Yes,” Rachel agrees, but it’s with enough emphasis that the sarcasm is impossible to miss. Rook almost throws a fry at her, but she can’t justify wasting the food. She shoves it into her mouth, instead, and hopes she doesn’t choke on it through her laughter. “You just _attract_ obstacles right into your path, huh?”

“Smart ass,” Rook whispers, and Rachel mimes a curtsey. “If I’m that bad a driver, why’d you ride with me at all?”

“You don’t scare me, Rook. Even if you drive like the world’s on fire behind you.” Rook could protest more, but she’s caught in the look on Rachel’s face, the quiet and open fondness that warms her from the inside out. She’s sure she’s blushing – sure her own embarrassment isn’t helping any, either, but lord if she can help it. “Besides,” Rachel continues, her voice quiet, a hand twirling a windswept blonde wave around her fingers, “my life can use more excitement.”

“I reckon your life’s plenty exciting as it is.”

“Maybe,” Rachel shrugs, releasing her hair. “Maybe now it is, yeah.”

Before Rook can query that, Rachel is standing and tucking the chair in behind her. She eats another fry and pinches two more from her plate before stepping away. Rook is easily beckoned; she leaves a tip that she hasn’t got time to properly count out, and almost trips over her own feet following Rachel out the door.

“You want to go home already?” she asks, and can’t help the disappointment – hopes it isn’t too obvious.

“No,” Rachel shakes her head, and she’s heading in the opposite direction to Rook’s parked truck, out towards the back fence surrounding the Saloon. She reaches the fence and stops to make sure that Rook is following her. “Let’s stay here a while? I don’t want to go back just yet. It’s so nice out, still.”

Rook glances around – can’t argue with her, and doesn’t really want to.

“Sure,” she says, and watches as Rachel hops the fence.

She follows easily after her, and lets herself be lead down the small hillside to where the old train tracks cut through overgrown grass. They’re close enough to the road to hear the occasional engine drive by, and chatter from the Saloon is dim but unobtrusive. On the other side of the tracks, the treeline teases a lick of shade, but Rachel plants herself down in the sun. She lies back on her elbows and kicks the dolly shoes off her feet.

Rook reclines by her side, pulls her cap over her eyes, and folds her arms back beneath her head.

She feels herself baking, feels the grass swish against her ears, her arms, the slip of exposed skin above her hips. Beside her, she feels Rachel’s presence, feels her gaze upon her even if she can’t confirm if it is, or if it’s just her wishful thinking. She breathes deep and exhales, and tells herself it doesn’t matter, either way.

“I’ve never kissed a girl before.”

It takes Rook a moment to remember their game.

“Truth,” she says, tentative, like it’s a question, and Rachel laughs like she’s laughed every other time that Rook’s been wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

Summer stretches lazily on.

Before Rook knows it, she’s celebrating her eighteenth birthday alone in the only bar in town that hasn’t asked her for I.D. The music is this-decade current, and the beer is watered down enough that she’s just barely beginning to feel a buzz, halfway through her second bottle. Rook hasn’t celebrated a birthday alone in too many years, but she has not forgotten this feeling, of being so inside of the world and outside of it.

Across the room, she’s caught the eye of a group of men not much her senior, but her blatant disinterest in joining their game of pool directs their interest elsewhere. It’s not attention that she wants, not really, not from such an anonymous source that it means nothing in the end. But, it’s her _birthday_ , damnit.

She takes another pull from the bottle and contemplates calling it a night, when she hears laugher like a trickle of familiarity coming from not too far away.

It takes her a moment to recognise the sound, and longer still to recognise the person that it’s coming from.

Almost as soon as Rook sees her, Rachel catches her eye, and her reaction is instant and therapeutic; nobody’s ever looked so happy to see her, Rook’s sure enough to put her money on it. Rachel’s up on her feet before Rook can speak, she’s arms and all her weight around Rook’s shoulders, giddy laughter in her ear.

“You’re here!” she says, like she can’t believe it.

Rook stares at the make-up, at the dilated pupils, the unadulterated bliss on her face.

“You’re here, too,” she tells her, and Rachel releases her with another laugh. She looks so much older than she is, Rook thinks, in the short dress and the heels and the confidence that radiates from her like visible aura. She’s like a star shooting through the sky, burning up, burning out; Rook wants to take a hold of her and shield her eyes both at the same time. “What are you doing here—who are you with?”

“A friend,” Rachel tells her, taps her on the nose. Rook tilts her face out of reach. “Who are _you_ here with?”

Rook looks around her and shrugs.

“You did not come here alone,” Rachel says, and the admonishment is as sharp as the finger that she prods into Rook’s chest. There’s not a lot that Rook can say in defence of herself, and so she says nothing, but that’s maybe worse. “Right,” Rachel says too loudly, demanding, drunk. “That’s it, then.”

She links her arm in Rook’s as if to say, _you’re with me_.

“Don’t worry about me. Where’s your friend, anyway?”

Rachel looks behind her, swaying into Rook’s side, who keeps the balance for the two of them. When she swings back around again, it’s with an unaffected shrug. “He must have left early,” she says, and Rook’s stomach sinks, and sinks, and sinks. (Rachel puts a hand on her cheeks and lifts, _lifts_.) “You get me all to yourself, then.”

Rook grins – oh, she’ll accept that.

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” Rachel agrees, taking her hand in hers, and pulls them towards a gap in the dance floor.

 

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight,” Rook says, later, when it’s just the two of them in her truck.

They’re parked just off an unlit road, windows down, music playing, halfway home. Rook smokes a cigarette and Rachel plays with a blade of wheatgrass that had been growing within reaching distance of the passenger’s side window. She snaps the fibrous stem in half, and places it between her lips the way that Rook does her cigarette – turns to Rook and winks and makes them laugh until they’re quiet again.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Rook asks, tapping ash out of the window.

Rachel considers her. She’s sobering, or sober, or just very tired. Her head lolls back against the seat and she frowns like she’s overthinking her answer, and probably is. “Is it a nice secret?” she asks quietly, and Rook watches her a moment and wonders at the horrible things that must have happened to her, to make her ask.

“Yeah,” she says, eventually, her throat tight.

“Okay. Tell me?”

Rook puts her cigarette out and flicks it into the grass. “It’s my birthday today.”

When she turns back to her, Rachel is looking at her like she isn’t sure she believes what’s just been said. She frowns when Rook makes no joke of it, when there’s no punchline to follow, and sits up a little straighter. Her expression turns to accusation; she slaps a hand against Rook’s knee, and then looks mildly apologetic – distracted.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I just did.”

“Doesn’t count,” Rachel dismisses, shoving her knee again. She keeps her hand there a moment, picking at the denim, patting Rook’s leg in thought. Rook watches the way her slender fingers drum a beat, then stop, interrupted by thought or fatigue. “I didn’t get you a present.”

Rook shrugs, makes a noise that sounds like, _I don’t care about that stuff_.

“I’d have got you something,” Rachel says, tucking both hands into her own lap, playing with her fingers.

She goes quiet again and it’s just the two of them, the girl on the radio, and her gently strumming guitar. Rook leans back in her seat and closes her eyes. She’s sober enough to pass a breathalyser, but there’s something about being here with Rachel in the dark that makes her head spin, makes her feel too far away from the rest of the world, in a good way.

“Can I tell you a secret, too?”

Rook opens her eyes to see that Rachel has turned in her seat to face her. She nods her head and waits, stops breathing, as Rachel leans across the console between them—as Rachel presses a hand to her cheek and _kisses_ her. It’s nothing more than a press of their lips before it’s over, before Rachel is retreating. Rook is slow to open her eyes again.

When she looks to Rachel, it’s to find her bashful and curled up in her seat, thumbnail between her teeth.

“Was that okay?” Rachel asks her after a pause, her voice no higher than a whisper.

Rook nods her head.

“Yeah,” she says, and Rachel smiles, pink in the cheeks, and puts her shoes back on.

“Take me back to yours first? I need to clean up before I go home.”

Rook nods her head, puts the truck into drive, and feels herself float away as she peels back onto the road.


	7. Chapter 7

Jessop’s Conservatory empties by sunset, but Rook lingers late after work.

Under the pretence of clearing up an equipment shed, she waits for the last of the workforce to say their goodbyes. It’s not that the equipment shed couldn’t use the cleanout, and she does, for her part, re-stack a few boxes of fertiliser, brush out the loose soil trodden into the floor, and re-organise a rack of hand tools in size-order, for convenience.

By the time she’s done, the Jessops themselves have left to run an errand, and Rachel appears in the doorway like Rook’s wished her into existence. She pulls off her thick gardening gloves and rubs her sweaty palms down her overalls. Leaning against the door jam, Rachel tucks her hair behind one ear and tilts her head as though to ask Rook if she’s ready to finish up.

It’s not that they’ve planned this, per se.

But Rachel had mentioned her parents had business in town, and Rook had mentioned her late finish. There was only ever one outcome to be had, after that.

Rachel leads the way home, and Rook pulls her boots off before she steps past the threshold. She is dirty and sweating, and worries for a moment that the Jessops will be less than pleased if they find her in their house, but Rachel ushers her along without care. Rook tucks both hands into her pockets and follows her through to the kitchen. She lingers by a counter-island while Rachel retrieves a plastic-wrapped bowl of leftover pasta from the fridge.

“Do you want it warming up?” Rachel asks her, removing the plastic wrap and retrieving two forks.

“My stomach is eating itself,” Rook tells her, pinching a fork, “I don’t care what you feed me, at this point.”

She takes her first mouthful, too much pasta on her fork, and swallows before she’s properly chewed. By now, her appetite comes as no surprise. They take the bowl to Rachel’s room, past a homely decorated sitting area and several closed doors. She lets Rook hold the bowl, and by the time they enter the bedroom half the pasta has disappeared.

“I can make you something proper if you want,” Rachel says when she’s given the bowl back.

“Nah, I’m good.” Rook licks her fork clean and places it carefully on a dressing table, so that the prongs hang over the edge. While she’s there, she touches her fingertips to a cluster of perfume bottles until the glasses tinkle against each other. She turns to Rachel with a smile. “Thanks, though.”

“You look like you’re dying to mess with everything,” Rachel says, and Rook laughs because it’s true.

She wants to touch and open and look inside of everything she can get her hands on, on all of Rachel’s little belongings that reveal a part of her that Rook might not get the chance to see, otherwise. Alas, she’s housetrained, and busies her fingers removing her cap, scratching her hair, messing up the already messy bun she’s been wearing all day.

“You can look,” Rachel tells her, coy, hugging the bowl in her lap. She’s sitting cross-legged and, from her position, Rook can see the bottom of one very dirty foot. “Just don’t break anything, and don’t touch the jewellery box. It… belonged to my grandmother.” She shrugs it off as though it’s no big deal, but Rook can see the niggle of uncertainty, of anxiety, when she says it.

She mock-salutes and promises to behave.

With her reins loosened, so to speak, she turns back to the dressing table and takes a closer look.

Rook imagines there’s nothing unusual about it, that numerous dressing tables sit in identical organised-disarray within numerous different households, but that doesn’t make this one any less special. Along with the perfume bottles (delicate fragrances that Rook only smells when she presses one to her nose; it’s like flowers and sunrise and Rachel’s hair blowing into her face with a sudden gust of wind), is a brush full of golden hair, limited make-up, and a glass of fresh flowers that anybody else would dismiss as weeds.

A fine-carved jewellery box peeks from beneath the shelf that the mirror sits on top of, not fully visible, set away but close to hand. It looks years old, the remaining paint on it faded and chipped, but well-cared for. Rook leaves it be. She turns to the bookshelf, next, and skims the titles of books she does and doesn’t recognise.

Literary classics – school textooks. Sketchbooks.

Titles that Rook runs her fingers over and suddenly has an urge to read.

A scarf hangs over a brass hook, along with a cross necklace and some beads. There’s a calendar pinned to the wall beside it, showcasing the month with a picture of a butterfly on big yellow flower. Various dates are circled, notes written in others, all for little appointments or reminders that fill out Rachel’s schedule.

Beside that, sketches of Rachel’s own doing line the walls. Women with wings and rabbits with antlers.

“You’re back in school soon, right?” Rook asks her without turning around.

From the bed, muffled agreement as Rachel finishes eating.

“What’s the plan after that?”

Rachel’s reply takes too long. When Rook turns to see her, she’s no longer eating, but sitting with the bowl in her lap and a contemplative expression on her face. Rook knows that feeling well. She abandons her rifling and takes a seat on the bed beside her, instead, her knee touching Rachel’s. She nudges her and smiles and makes Rachel smile, again, because she’d missed it.

“I’m not sure,” Rachel answers honestly. “College, I guess.”

“What will you study?”

An exhausted sigh, and Rachel shrugs her shoulders. “I really don’t know, yet.”

“Well,” Rook says, leaning over to plant her elbows on her own knees, “there’s no rush.”

“Yeah… How about you?” Rachel asks, and at Rook’s blank look, continues. “College—?”

“Oh,” Rook says, grins, and shakes her head. “Unlikely.” There’s an almost self-deprecating slump to her shoulders, but Rook doesn’t let either of them linger on it for too long. She bumps her shoulder into Rachel’s and rubs idly at one eye, suppressing a yawn. “I’m not clever like you.”

Rachel huffs like she’d disagree, if she had the energy. “You’re sticking around, then? In town, I mean.”

She meets Rook’s eyes and dares her to say no.

“Sure,” Rook says, slipping Rachel’s abandoned fork out of the bowl to pick at the very dregs of remaining pasta. “Seems I’ve got plenty reason to, haven’t I?”

Rachel smiles to her in ways that say _yes_ and _don’t you dare leave_.

Rook really has no intention of disappointing her.


	8. Chapter 8

Rook takes a dinghy from the Marina.

With Addie’s blessing, she picks out a mandarin orange boat from her private stock. It’s not that she’s worked particularly hard for this, but she’d asked, and Addie had listened, like some kind of unorthodox aunt – the kind that takes you to your first bar and introduces you to her favourite hangover cures – and told Rook that she can take the dinghy as long as she takes a couple of life preservers with her.

Rook had readily agreed to her terms.

It’s mid-day when they can finally make their escape. While Rook readies the dinghy, Rachel squats on the edge of the pier with her backpack by her side, peering down into the water. It's murky enough that she can barely see the bottom. Judging by the look on her face, she's not so much impressed by the Marina, as she is a little uncertain of Rook’s plan to bring them out here.

"You ready to go?" Rook asks her, untying the dinghy and standing by, waiting for the go ahead.

Rachel looks out at the harbour, at the little island that's just a dot in the distance, their planned destination, and squints past the glare of the sun. She brushes hair away from her mouth and turns to Rook with a look that's determination and false confidence. Rook recognises it in an instant.

"Yeah, I'm ready."

"What's wrong?"

Rachel wets her lip. "I can't... I don't exactly know how to swim."

Rook processes this information. She looks out at the water, herself, and wonders how much of a bad idea this could be, if anything were to go wrong. She's a strong swimmer, and the current isn't exactly dangerous this far into the lake. They'll almost certainly make it out there and back without any need for concern, but still. She worries because Rachel worries, empath that she is.

"There are safety jackets," she says, fishing one out of the dinghy. "I'll be wearing one, too. Addie’s rules."

She smiles and hopes it's reassuring.

"Besides," Rook says, stepping forward. She takes Rachel's hand in hers and squeezes like she can pass on a little of her own confidence, as if that's how it works. "I'm a strong swimmer. I won't let anything bad happen to you while we’re out there, but if you'd prefer to do something else, that's totally okay, too."

"I don't want—you put so much effort into arranging this," Rachel says, and she's chewing her lip, free hand in her hair, looking for all the world like she's sorry and she should have said something sooner. Rook wouldn't mind if she had – could have dealt with this then, but she doesn’t mind dealing with this now, either.

It's not their impromptu camping trip that's important. It's spending time with Rachel, whether they're out on the water or not, that matters here. She doesn't need a semi-romantic, bug-ridden getaway for that...

"It doesn't matter, don't think about it like that," she says. Rachel clings a little firmer to her hand. "We could be shooting cans at the trailer park with Sharky, for all I care. If you don’t want to get out on the water, then I don’t want to get out on the water. Anyway, Sharky’s become pretty creative with fireworks lately, so that could be fun, too."

Rachel squints, unconvinced.

"No," she says, and there's a smile in her voice, at least, like Rook was hoping to achieve. Colour is beginning to return to her cheeks. "I think I'd prefer this. Even if I do drown horribly, or we’re eaten by hungry bears..."

"That won't happen," Rook promises, but she's grinning and helping Rachel put on a life jacket.

It's too large and doesn't look particularly comfortable, at first, but adjusting the straps helps some. When she puts her own on, Rachel laughs and does not help her struggle. Safety jackets on, Rook steps towards the waiting dinghy and offers her hand. It’s the very last chance to back out of getting on the water altogether.

Rachel takes her hand with no small amount of concern.

She is wobbly and unsure, when she boards, and the dinghy shifts and unbalances beneath her. For one stomach-lurching second Rook thinks she's going to fall in, but then she finds her balance. Rachel sits down as soon as she’s able, and that helps, at least, to stop the boat from rocking. Rook clambers in next, bringing their packs with her.

(It's a smoother entrance but she doesn't bring that up.)

She situates herself behind the wheel and stretches her legs, rolls her sleeves up, looks down at the controls and mentally talks herself through her preparations. She's done this before, of course. Addie wouldn't let her take a dinghy if she hadn't. This time is different, though; this time, it's not just her own safety that is being potentially put at risk.

From the front of the boat, wedged right into the crook where it comes to a rounded point (gripping on for dear life), Rachel looks at her with wide, trusting eyes. Rook nods her head, smiles with conviction, and starts the engine.

 

After a bumpy start, the water calms down and the dinghy glides easily towards the ever-growing island in the distance. Even Rachel relaxes, turning to watch their approach, dipping her fingers over the side to just barely graze the water. Her hair and her dress blow a gale in their resulting wind. When she turns back to Rook, it's with laughter that they leave far behind them, and Rook can't help but join in.

 

The island is empty when they approach, but there's a pre-set-up tent and a campfire not yet lit.

"You've spent the night out here before?" Rachel asks her, happy to be on dry land. She takes their backpacks to the tent and sets them safely inside, peers in at where they'll be sleeping for the night. If only her parents knew she were here, she thinks, with no small amount of satisfaction. "It's bigger than I thought it'd be."

"I've spent some time out here fishing," Rook says, dodging the question.

(If Rachel notices, she doesn't bring it up.)

She starts a fire while Rachel unpacks lunch – sandwiches that she'd prepared before they left, and a sealed bag of marshmallows, because it had seemed fitting. She tucks those into the tent for later, when they can huddle around the fire and gorge themselves to a stomach ache on sugar.

"I've never been camping before," Rachel says, walking around the small clearing, hands on her hips, as though she’s sussing out the land. "Not unless you count falling asleep outside without meaning to, anyway."

"I don't," Rook grins, bringing their food over to the pier. It's small and old and creaks when she walks across it, but it's close enough to the water that when she sits down, shoes off, she can dangle her feet right in. Rachel doesn't hesitate to join her.

"You've camped before, then?" she asks, taking her lunch into her lap.

"Mm, my grandparents had a camper van back when I was a kid. They'd mainly go to touristy camp sites, but every now and then they'd take us out in the sticks. No telephone service, no neighbours, no real-life distractions. I'd have a little tent outside on my own because the camper wasn’t really big enough for all three of us." She turns to Rachel with a grin. "Sleeping out beneath the stars, cooking dinner on the open fire… it was awesome."

Rachel huffs a laugh through a mouthful of food.

"I'd go by myself sometime, if I had the balls. Me, my truck, a tent... a fishing rod, maybe."

"Sounds lonely," Rachel tells her. "You'd need company."

"Oh, you're volunteering?"

Rachel makes a noise like a scoff in the back of her throat, but doesn't necessarily deny it.

 

Once they've finished eating, Rook passes a water canteen to Rachel and stands to clear their food away. All wrappers go back into her pack, all remaining food (a piece of sandwich crust from Rachel's plate, and nothing more) are eaten so as not to attract any unwanted visitors. She kneels to stoke the fire, and when she looks back up again, it's to see Rachel pulling her dress up and over her head.

She turns pink and warm and utterly silent.

Ahead of her, Rachel discards her dress behind her without care, and steps towards the water. She's wearing nothing but her white, cotton underwear, her hair loose down her back. She gets in to her calves, her knees, thighs... until she disappears from her mid-section down.

Rook sees her visibly take a large breath in that she's slow to exhale.

When she turns to Rook, slowly, carefully, it's with a look on her face that's quiet beckoning.

Rook stares.

Rachel is a vision in the water, arms held out on either side of herself, steadying herself in place. She looks at Rook and her cheeks turn pink. "Well?" she says, too quietly for Rook to properly hear her, but she stands, anyway. She makes her way towards the water, shedding her clothing down to her underwear as she goes.

Even in the summer heat, the temperature of the water comes as a shock.

Rook wades in until she, too, is standing with it up to her naval. She lowers herself slowly, holds her breath, ducks her head underneath. When she surfaces again, seconds later, brushing the water from her eyes, it's slightly warmer than she'd felt going in. She shakes her hair out and has to re-tie it into a tight ponytail.

Rachel is grinning at her, but it falls from her face the second she loses her footing and slips in to her chest.

Rook finds her in the water, her hand to Rachel's waist, the other at her hip, steadying her. "Easy," she says to the look of panic on Rachel's face, "it's alright, I've got you." She eases herself further in to where the water becomes deeper, and Rachel, loose in her arms, has the choice not to follow. Instead, she lets herself be taken in.

When the water reaches the top of her bra, Rachel presses against Rook's side. Her arms are secured, too-tight, around her shoulders. Rook tightens her own grasp on her, if only to make her feel safer. Rachel's feet no longer touch the lake floor, but she barely weighs a thing with the water's buoyancy.

Rook walks them out until she's on her tip toes, until Rachel's heart is hammering in her chest, her face inches from Rook's.

"Take me back?" she asks, and her voice is barely a whisper, is not yet pleading, but Rook stops moving all the same. She does not question her. She begins the slow return up the lake's embankment, until Rachel can touch the bottom if she wants, again. Instead, she wraps her legs around Rook's hips and rests her chin on her shoulder.

"Here's fine," she says, her voice but a breath in Rook's ear, and so Rook stops and holds her.

(She feels Rachel's heart pounding against her chest, until it slows, calms, steadies.)

"I can teach you to swim, if you want," Rook tells her, swaying with the water, the sun on her back and the top of her head keeping her warm. She has her hands at a respectable place on Rachel's thighs, and brushes her thumbs against the skin there, soft and cool. Rachel’s legs give a minute squeeze against her hips.

"Not yet," Rachel tells her, and she sounds like she could drift off to sleep. "I’m too relaxed. I never thought I’d be so comfortable out here, but you make all of this seem less scary than it is when I'm on my own. I don’t feel like I’m in any kind of danger, at all. Like even if I ran off that pier and jumped in, you’d bring me straight back up again.”

She nuzzles closer, her nose to Rook’s throat.

“Let's just stay a while, just like this,” she begs.

So, Rook does.


	9. Chapter 9

The hours stretch like cats in the sun while Rook works at the Conservatory.

It’s as though time follows different rules once her front bumper crosses the line into the Jessops’ land. It slows, elongates—it wilts in the same way that Rook wilts in the heat, drags lazily on, exhausts her. She wouldn’t mind it so much, if time didn’t seem to speed up as soon as she finished work, as soon as her time was her own again. 

When the sun reaches its peak in the cloudless sky, Rook takes shelter in the shadow of an equipment shed with an over-hanging roof and unscrews the cap off her flask. The water inside is lukewarm and hours old, but she’s too parched to be picky. She gulps it down until she has to stop for breath, and spills a little purposefully down the back of her neck. Her t-shirt is already wet with sweat and looks no worse for her brief indulgence.

“Somebody need a break?”

She’s been caught.

Rook downs the rest of her water, head tipped back, and holds her other hand up to show her fingers and thumb. _Five minutes, please._ Rachel smiles and nods her understanding. She’s never really dressed for work, but less so today. Her dress is white and new, and already fraying around the hem – already smudged with dirt and grass-stained, the way that most of Rachel’s clothes are.

She spins in the sun like she can barely feel it, but she is browning, freckling, and very slightly burning on her shoulders and the bridge of her nose. She wears sunscreen that smells like vacation, but has clearly missed a few spots, or not been diligent enough in her up-keep. She wears a tan well, though, on her face and arms and legs, on her bare feet that pitter-patter on the hot soil to keep from burning.

Rachel spins and spins and laughs, delirious, when she almost falls over.

Rook thinks maybe the heat’s gotten to her.

“Come sit in the shade a while,” she says, and there’s an outdoor faucet not too far from where they’re standing. She walks towards it and Rachel skips to keep up. Once she’s re-filled her canteen, Rook passes it to Rachel, who accepts it with quiet thanks and a large sip. She presses the cold metal to her cheeks, her throat. Her hairline is wet with sweat.

“Sit down a moment,” Rook urges her, so Rachel does.

She splays her legs out in front of her and runs her fingers through the grass between them – tips her head back, and back, and closes her eyes. Rook takes the cap off her own head and puts it on Rachel’s, and that makes her smile and laugh again.

“My heart is racing,” Rachel tells her, and reclines until she’s lying down.

“I think you have a touch of heat stroke.” Rook hovers over her, concerned. “You should drink some more water.”

“I’m fine…”

Rook doesn’t look convinced. She places her hand on Rachel’s forehead, turns it over and takes her temperature with the other side, as well. The skin against hers is cool and clammy. “It’s too hot for you to be working out here all day,” Rook tells her, although Rachel’s work is much less physically demanding than her own.

“I’m just sweaty and tired,” Rachel tells her, and takes Rook’s hand from her forehead. She plays with her fingers – so calloused to say she’s still so young – then rests it against her chest. Rook feels her heart _thump, thump, thump_ against her palm. “Can you feel that?” Rachel asks, but she’s grinning, closes her eyes again.

“Are you getting any chest pains?”

“No… no, I’m really okay. I feel good.”

Rook hovers closer, one hand in the dirt keeping her steady, the other clutched in Rachel’s two. Like this, with the sun in her hair, Rachel looks like something out of a painting. She makes Rook’s heart race with whimsy. She wants to bend down and kiss her freckled cheeks, the sunburn on her nose, her sweaty forehead. They’re far enough away from the house, the other workers, that Rook doesn’t even feel afraid of being caught when she presses her own dry lips to Rachel’s.

Rook draws back, and green eyes open below her like a princess in a fairytale waking from true love’s kiss.

Rachel does not look surprised. She smiles up at Rook and Rook can believe it, this fairytale that they’re in, where she can lie in the grass all day and kiss princesses back to life. Beneath the rim of her cap, Rachel’s pupils dilate in the shade, growing wide and wider. Rook sees herself in the black depths of them, like she’s looking back up at herself from the bottom of a rabbit hole.

“What was that for?” Rachel whispers.

(This is how she speaks to Rook, in whispers, like she’s afraid that if she speaks too loudly she’ll call attention to what they’re doing and it will have to _stop_.)

“Just because,” Rook whispers back. “Is that okay?”

Rachel smiles slowly. She nods her head.

“Do it again.”


	10. Chapter 10

Rook takes her time packing away, come evening.

The sun had set twenty minutes prior, and the sky is a pink promise of another hot day to follow.

She pulls the cap from her head, now that it’s grown cooler, and tosses it into her truck’s open window for later. Sitting in the back of the truck, Rachel threads her final daisy into the chain she’s created, and fiddles to loop both ends together. It looks long enough for a too-large crown, or short enough for a necklace that will snap the second that she tries to get it over her head, but Rook’s no expert.

“That’s me done,” she says, and Rachel looks up, breaking her concentration. She smiles when she catches Rook watching. She’s wedged in between two secured stacks of wooden planks from one of the Jessops’ recently dismantled work sheds; Mr. Jessop had let her take her fill, and Rook has plans on how to best utilize them, most of which involve Sharky, BB guns, and not-completely-legal activities in the woods. “Comfortable back there?”

Rachel stands with a quiet hum.

She holds her hand out for help climbing down, and Rook obliges.

“You don’t have to leave yet, do you?” Rachel asks once she’s back on the ground. She fiddles with the daisy chain, feigning disinterest, but Rook’s had practice seeing through this particular façade. When Rachel loops the daisy chain over her head, careful of how it falls so that it doesn’t slip into her eyes, Rook slides her fingers away to ensure that it does. The daisy chain falls to Rachel’s nose and gets stuck there.

“Oh, now that’s a _look_ ,” Rook intones, and Rachel can’t stop her smile.

(Rook’ll call that a success.)

She moves to enter her truck, and Rachel follows her around, closing the door behind her.

“Are you sure I can’t tempt you into coming with me tomorrow?” Rachel asks.

She leans with her crossed arms in Rook’s driver’s side window, partially inside of the truck, twirling a leg behind her. She is sweetly smiling with the evening’s light haloing her golden hair, lighting her up. Behind her, a breeze blows her perfume into the truck and back out of the opposite window. Rook breathes it in like she’s gasping.

“Honestly,” she says, “no, I’m not sure. But I really do have to work, so I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Mhm, _work_.”

Rook laughs and shakes her head. “You know I actually _do_ stuff at the Marina, right? Hard work that I’m paid for? Money in exchange for services?”

“I believe you,” Rachel says, smiling like she doesn’t. “I just think this would be good for you. It’s not like church, really, it’s not all stuffy bible verses and _hail Mary_ this, _Jesus died for your sins_ that. This guy actually has a message and it… resonates with you. It resonated with me the way that going to church with my parents just never has before. It’s like he can see right to the root of your problems just by looking at you, and shows you the path you need to follow to fix them. He’s a really talented preacher.”

Rook makes an unconvinced noise in the back of her throat.

“Just try it,” Rachel urges, “just once. If you don’t like it, you never have to go again.”

She holds Rook’s gaze with those wide, pleading green eyes, and Rook is a sucker and a goddamn fool, but she’s falling quick and hard and helplessly into being irrevocably wrapped around Rachel’s pinkie finger. And she likes it. God, but she’s missed this feeling. She shakes her head and smiles.

“You could probably talk me into anything.”

“Is that a yes?” Rachel asks, reaching into the truck. She twirls the end of Rook’s pony tail around her finger.

“It’s an I don’t want to, but I probably will, anyway.” Rachel pouts and Rook grins and pokes her bottom lip. “Don’t be trying that, you know I’d rather be hanging out with you at bible study than doing something fun by myself.” Rachel scoffs in her face, but Rook only smiles her _you know I’m right_ look.

“It isn’t bible study.”

“Of course it’s not…”

“Really,” Rachel says, and gives a tug on Rook’s pony tail because she deserves it. “You’ll see when you come with me.”

Rook smirks and shakes her head, but it’s not exactly denial. She’s sure she will, eventually.

The song on the radio stops playing and a news broadcast begins; Rook half-listens to talk of gun violence and extremism, but it doesn’t hold her attention. It’s all the same, these days. She checks the time on her dashboard and knows that if she lingers any longer, she’ll be late for her shift. She turns back to Rachel, and Rachel smiles at her like she already knows it’s time to say goodbye.  

“Need a lift to bible study?” Rook asks her, and Rachel sighs but shakes her head.

“No, that’s alright, it’ll take you out of your way.”

“I don’t mi—”

“Go,” Rachel laughs. She pushes back from the truck to keep her feet out of wheel-crushing-distance. “Drive safely.”

“You know I always do.”

Rook salutes and shifts the truck into drive.

She keeps an eye on Rachel, growing ever smaller in her rear-view mirror, until Rook turns a corner and she disappears from view altogether.


	11. Chapter 11

There’s still mist on the water by the time Rook arrives at the Marina.

It’s Saturday and just turned dawn, and if the roads in Hope County weren’t so quiet, she might have worried a little about how tired she’d been on the drive in. She parks her truck round the back and slaps her cheeks twice before stepping outside.

This early, the sun is weak and the air feels pleasantly cool against her bare arms. She tucks her t-shirt into the waistband on her jeans and pulls on a snapback on her way to the main office – a disorganised, tiny room just off the house that Rook’s had little reason to spend much time in, before.

Addie’s already behind the desk when Rook enters.

“Well, shit, sugar, what’s with the night of the livin’ dead getup?” she laughs, shaking her head. “I swear, you kids don’t know you’re born.”

Rook can only groan in response.

“Make yourself a cuppa somethin’ before you fall asleep on your feet,” Addie instructs her, waving her over to the coffee machine in the back. “You know I ain’t forcin’ you to be here, don’tcha? If this ain’t gonna work out for you, I need you to tell me so now, before I get to relying on you with the paperwork.”

That wakes Rook up, some.

“I know, I’m good,” she says over the sound of the coffee machine. “Really, I appreciate the extra hours.”

“If you say so,” Addie mutters, not unkindly.

When Rook brings her coffee over – in a green mug with a motivational slogan across the front; probably Xander’s – there’s already a pile of paperwork waiting for her. Rook eyes it with no small amount of unease. It’s true that she’d asked for the work, even when Addie had informed her that it’d be in the office.

_Still_.

Rook’s always been better with a hands-on type of job, than what’s being asked of her here.

From the corner of her eye, she notices Addie watching her, and meets her gaze.

“You’ve got the look of a newborn lamb,” she says, and Rook frowns the expression from her face. “Don’t go frettin’ before I even tell you what you’re doing, okay? You know I wouldn’t ask you in here if I didn’t think you were up to the job.”

“Sure,” Rook agrees, not entirely feeling it.

She takes a too-large sip from her coffee and feels all the more awake when it burns down her throat.

She has no idea how Addie does this for a living.

 

 

 

Rook wakes with a jolt when something hits her foot.

Her return to the waking world is disgruntled and graceless, as she rubs the sleep from her eyes and grunts. For a second, she has no idea where she is. Disorientation comes dizzyingly quick – her day already feels as though it’s held twice the number of hours than it has any right to – and then she sets eyes on a familiar figure standing above her.

Rachel is wearing pink, today.

It’s the kind of pale that comes from over-wearing and multiple-washing, and Rook imagines it had been brighter, in its day, like the colour of the flowers that the Jessops’ grow in their front window boxes. As with most of Rachel’s clothing, it’s already green in places, and torn in the hem.

“Are you sleeping on the job?” Rachel asks her, expression stern, hands on her hips. Rook flops onto her back and stretches her arms above her. She does not miss the way that Rachel watches her body move, as though she’s not even aware that she’s doing it. “You just can’t find the staff these days...”

Rook huffs and covers her face with one arm.

“It’s my break.”

“Shouldn’t you be eating?”

A sound like somebody sitting in the grass comes from Rook’s right, but she does not bother to look. Hasn’t the energy, yet.

Then a finger pokes her ribs.

Rook groans in what’s supposed to be a plea for mercy.

Rachel prods at her again.

“Ugh.”

“Rook,” Rachel whines, and then there’s more shifting, until Rook can feel the heat of Rachel’s body almost-touching her side. It’s not unpleasant, despite the midday heat, especially when Rachel begins to walk her fingers up along Rook’s chest. Her fingertips glide up Rook’s throat, to the underside of her chin, oh-so-briefly against her lips, until she _boops_ her on the nose.

Rook does lift her arm, then, only to find Rachel watching her, too close.

“Are you sick?”

“No,” Rook yawns. “Just tired. I’m putting in some extra work at the Marina.”

Rachel’s expression remains nondescript. “Why?”

“Oh, you know. Love the smell of expensive boats and fish.” Rachel frowns at her, and Rook huffs a laugh at the expression on her face. “I could just use the cash, is all.” She stretches her arms above her head again, and is sure there’ll be grass in her hair by the time she rises, but hasn’t the energy to care. “No offence to your daddy, of course, but if I put any more hours in here, I’d die before I turn twenty.”

“Hm,” Rachel says, and nothing more.

She turns onto her back and Rook twists her face to follow her, but Rachel closes her eyes, not yet ready to be sought.

Well. Rook is only too happy to wait.

She follows suit and lets her own eyes close, not before stealing a quick glance at her wristwatch. She has plenty of time for more napping, yet.

The air is warm and sweet with summer, and Rook is just exhausted enough that she is quickly captive to the drowsy state that comes just before sleep. It’s then that Rachel speaks, her voice so quiet that Rook might have missed it, had it been a minute later.

“Rook… you’re not struggling, are you?”

Rook opens her eyes, surprised. She turns to look at Rachel and frowns as though to ask her what she means.

“Financially, I mean.”

_Ah_.

Rook rolls herself onto one side so that she’s facing Rachel, and Rachel instinctively follows suit.

The washed-out pink of her dress brings something of a rosy-undertone to her cheeks, Rook thinks, or perhaps that’s just the sun.

“No, I’m not struggling,” she whispers into the space that they’ve created between them, scant as it is. “Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say I’m _comfortable_ , either, but I’m getting by. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Rachel nods her head and a strand of ashy blonde hair falls into her face.

Rook reaches out to brush it aside without thinking.

“So, the extra shifts,” Rachel presses. “You won’t… I mean, you’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”

For a moment, Rook is too surprised to answer.

“Why would you think that?” she asks, but gives Rachel no time to answer. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve just got settled, haven’t I? Besides,” and her gaze falters, unable to quite look Rachel in the eyes, “I’ve got something to stay for.”

That brings a shy smile to Rachel’s face, at least.

“Really?”

“Yep,” Rook agrees, and that’s all she’s saying on that.

An easy silence falls between them, acting as a barrier to the outside world – rather, the rest of the conservatory and its workers just up the incline of the hill that they’re resting on. All of Hope County might have disappeared around them, but for that patch of dirt and grass and pressing sunshine, and neither could’ve noticed.

Finally, Rachel kicks a bare foot against Rook’s shin, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt— gentle enough that it lingers there, like something of a caress.

“That’s a relief,” she says, and tries to play it off with a smile.

Rook wonders if Rachel’s heart is beating quite as fiercely as hers is.


	12. Chapter 12

Rook isn’t sure what’s woken her, at first, but she’s conscious and blinking blearily around the tin-can inside of her trailer.

She rolls onto her back, discards sheets with the way that she stretches all her limbs, and then checks her phone for the time – just like a reflex.

What she finds there, instead, are three missed calls from Rachel.

Panic sits her upright and alert. A sinking feeling has fallen into her stomach and it twists there, _hurts_. Rook unlocks her phone on the second go, still blinking her vision into focus, and goes to her recent call list. Rachel’s name sits at the top with a (3) against it, bold and red and terrible. It makes Rook feel suddenly ill.

The last call had only been a few minutes ago, she realises (and then she sees the time – just a little after 01:30 – and it’s no wonder she’s so tired).

She hits the call-back button and waits impatiently through three agonising rings before the line is answered.

At first, there’s silence.

Rook pushes the phone closer into her ear and squints and— there, if she holds her breath, she can hear the faintest sound of somebody trying not to cry on the other side of the line. Relief comes small and brief to her, and she wets her lips, whispers, “Rachel?”

“Yeah,” Rachel whispers back, her voice croaking through the receiver.

“What’s happened— are you safe?”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, again, but her voice sounds different, now, and it takes her too long to be able to speak again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called, I’m sorry.”

Through the sobs and sniffles that she’s trying to quiet, Rook whispers reassurances.

“Take a deep breath,” she says, and she hears it come shaky and over-loud through the line. “Now tell me what’s happened.”

She hears Rachel’s battle with hesitation in the next few, quiet seconds.

“It’s stupid. I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have rang you at this time.”

“Hey, listen to me, I don’t care what time it is. If you need to ring me, you ring me, okay?”

Quieter, still, Rachel agrees, “Okay.”

Rook sits properly up in bed, putting her pillow against the headboard and leaning back against it. She rubs briefly at her eyes and wonders how long it’ll take her to get dressed and in her truck, if she needs to. For one ludicrous moment, she begins looking over the open-plan trailer wondering where she could sleep, if she needed to give Rachel her bed for the night.

She’s fallen asleep on the couch a few times, and suffered from it, but it’d _do_.

“Are you still there?” Rachel whispers over the line.

Her voice sounds clearer, now, if still as faint.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“My parents were fighting again.” Rook’s stomach twists at the admission, but she does not interrupt. “It got pretty bad and my mom walked out. She took the car and she hasn’t come back, or rang, or anything. My dad’s downstairs like he’s… I think he’s waiting for her, Rook, but I don’t know what he’ll do if she comes home.”

By the end of it, her voice has grown tight and afraid, threatened by tears.

Rook takes a deep breath and feels helplessly out of her depth.

“Okay,” she nods. “Alright. Do you have a lock on your door?”

“He’d never hurt me,” Rachel instantly replies, but the next few seconds of silence spell uncertainty. “Yeah, it’s locked.”

“Good. I can get to you in about twenty minutes. You just stay there until I arrive, alright? Don’t go downstairs.”

“What? No, Rook, I— I didn’t mean to even wake you up, I don’t want you out on the road at this time. I’m just… shaken up, and you were the first person I thought to ring, but... They argue all the time, honestly, I’m just being dramatic. If it was serious, you know I’d call the Sheriff, right? There’s really no need for you to come h—”

She stops talking at the sound of Rook’s truck door closing, over-loud in the near-silence of her side of the line.

“Twenty minutes,” Rook tells her, again. “I’ll park a ways down from your place and sneak up, alright?”

“Okay,” Rachel breathes, and it sounds too much like relief for Rook to question whether or not this is a good idea. “You shouldn’t be on the phone while you’re driving.”

“Alright,” Rook agrees, and the line terminates.

 

Rook parks out of sight of the Jessop Conservatory.

She cuts her engine and unfastens her seatbelt, and just sits there for a little while.

She wonders just how serious of a situation she’s getting herself into.

Rook is quiet in exiting her truck, and pockets her keys as she heads up to the main building. Her work place looks different at night. Rook can’t quite put her finger on it, but it sends a small shiver down her spine, even beneath her jacket.

When she reaches the house, Rook sticks to the shadows. There’s a light coming from the front sitting room, and, perhaps foolishly, she chances a glance in through the window. Low lamplight illuminates the sleeping form of Mr. Jessop in an armchair. He looks to have been passed out for a while, and when Rook eyes the half-empty bottle of expensive looking whiskey at his feet, she’s not at all surprised.

Moving away from the front of the house, she opens her phone and checks the text that she’d felt vibrate in her pocket while driving.

_Rachel: Climb up the trellis beneath my window when you get here. It’ll hold you fine._

Rook makes her way around the house, to the window that she knows to be Rachel’s.

The lights are off inside, but the window is open a crack – just enough for somebody on the outside to slip their fingers beneath.

The trellis, it turns out, can hold her weight without objection. Rook climbs carefully, even so, and maintains a crouched position until she reaches the window. It wouldn’t do to make it this far, just to have some unsuspecting and unlikely passerby spot her and assume that she’s robbing the place. She reaches the window ledge and tucks her fingers beneath it, slowly sliding it up.

When the window is open wide enough for her to peek inside, Rook whispers, “Rachel?”

There’s movement from the bed.

After another second, the bedsheets disrupt to reveal a head of blonde hair and wide, blinking eyes.

“Rook?”

Rook smiles at her – something soft and wobbly – and pushes the window fully open, so that she might slip inside.

Once she’s cleared the threshold, Rook closes the window again and then locks it. She turns to the bed in time to spot Rachel making room for her, pulling back the sheets. Rook sits on the edge of it, wary of her boots, and Rachel shifts ever closer. Rook isn’t quite expecting her to land in her lap, but suddenly she’s there, arms around her shoulders, face buried in her neck.

Rook isn’t sure what to do with her hands.

Shaking herself, she tightens her hold on Rachel, and shivers at the feeling of her nightdress against her palms.

It’s short and soft, and Rook can feel the warmth from Rachel’s bare legs in her lap.

She closes her eyes and tells herself, quite sternly, to behave.

The soft sniffling coming from the crook of her neck, at least, helps in that regard.

“Hey,” Rook whispers, moving a hand to Rachel’s face. When Rachel doesn’t let herself be moved, Rook changes tactics— leaves her there, lets her cry quietly against her throat while Rook brushes her fingers through gently-tangled blonde hair. She shifts their position for comfort, and ends up with Rachel fully in her lap, cradling her like a child.

Rachel stays like that until Rook loses track of time.

Her fatigue is an ever-present weight at the corners of her consciousness, but Rook blinks herself awake every time she feels herself beginning to drift away. All around them, the Jessops’ house is quiet and still, more so when Rachel becomes much the same in Rook’s arms.

She thinks Rachel might have actually fallen asleep, herself, until a wobbly hand is raised to clear the tear tracks from her own cheeks.

Rook sits back a little, then, and Rachel allows herself to be seen.

She looks at Rook like she wants to burst into tears again, had she the energy.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, again, frowning. Rook hates the look on her face. “I’m such an idiot, I shouldn’t have woken you up.”

“Don’t say that. I’m glad you did.”

“You’re just saying that,” Rachel breathes, dipping her head, but Rook captures her chin and makes her meet her gaze.

“No,” she tells her, utterly serious. “No, I’m not.”

Rachel holds her gaze, turning soft and vulnerable.

She swallows audibly and takes a deep, shuddering breath in. Like this, she seems to realise just where she’s sitting, and her attention falls to Rook’s shoulders. There’s a kind of trepidation in the way that Rachel runs a hand along Rook’s shoulder and upper arm, as though her fingers are working out the muscles there. The look on her face turns Rook’s cheeks warm and pink in the dark.

“Do you want to come back to my place?”

Rachel presses her lips together as though she wants to say something but isn’t sure how.

“Can you stay?” she asks, eventually, and Rook relaxes.

“Yeah, I can stay.”

She’ll worry about sneaking back out again when it comes to it, she thinks, as Rachel slips out of her lap. Rook shrugs out of her jacket and unties her boots, and wonders how much she’ll hate herself, come morning, for sleeping in a pair of jeans. She sets an early alarm on her phone and places it on Rachel’s bedside table before turning in to the bed.

Rachel has made herself small and inviting on one side of the mattress.

She pats the space beside her, and Rook slips carefully inside.

When they’ve settled, Rachel turns slowly onto her side, facing away from her.

“Rook?” she says, tilting her head not quite far enough to see her.

Pressing closer, Rook spoons her from behind, tucking her knees up against Rachel’s legs.

“I’m here,” she whispers. “Get some sleep.”

 


	13. Chapter 13

Rook wakes before her alarm.

Unlike the last time, her return to the world is neither disoriented nor uneasy.

She blinks herself into a drowsy state of consciousness, just enough that she becomes aware of the warm body against her front, and the pins and needles in the arm that she’s got trapped beneath her head under the pillow. Rook moves herself gently enough that she does not disturb Rachel, and takes stock of the situation.

The Jessops’ house is still quiet around them.

There’s light coming faint and grey-ish through the window, where the drapes have been left open.

Rachel’s body moves slowly up and down as she breathes, clearly still asleep.

Rook still has one arm around Rachel’s waist, hand limp against the soft of her belly. She daren’t move to check the time on her phone, and dreads the sound it will make when her alarm goes off – quieted from its usual volume, just enough to wake the room. She can’t guess at how long she has left like this, and is surprised that her body isn’t yet screaming for sleep.

She’s sure it will be, come mid-morning, when the climbing heat of the day is heavy on her back.

But, for now, Rook remains restful and at ease.

She’s not sure how much time passes before Rachel begins to wake.

A noise like a soft groan sounds from the pillow, muffled, and Rachel’s legs go very straight until they begin to shake a little, and then relax. Beneath the sheets, a hand soft and warm comes to Rook’s own, holding it against her stomach. Rook feels her body expand and deflate around three deep breaths before Rachel realises that Rook’s awake, and turns to greet her.

In the pre-dawn light, Rachel’s face is soft with shadow.

Her eyes are tired and wide, and her mouth smiles when she whispers, “Hi.”

Rook can’t help but smile back.

“Hi.”

Her hand had moved to Rachel’s hip as she’d shifted, and she strokes her thumb against the skin there, warm through her nightgown.

Rachel stretches a leg out until she tucks it over Rook’s thigh.

The atmosphere has zero right to be this soft and inviting, given the situation that it’s amounted from, and yet—

Rook doesn’t think she’s ever felt so at peace in… _well_.

(She’d been one of those kids who’d had to grow up too quickly – still is, for the most part. Being with Rachel makes it feel a lot like the world is slowing down, again. A lot like it’s giving her time to catch up.)

“I should probably slip out,” Rook says, loathe as she is to follow through. She’s sure that her alarm will go off any minute now, and a part of her wants to wait it out and spend as much time as she can in her current position. Another part of her is already startlingly awake at the fear of being caught.

Rook sees the same indecision in Rachel’s sleepy expression.

“Right now?” she asks, and something gentle and elusive settles inside of Rook, behind her ribcage, as though Rachel had reached right in and put it there herself.

“No,” she says, and she’s a goddamn fool, but at least she knows it, “not yet.”

(Rachel’s smile, soft with sleep, makes it worth it.)

Rook’s imminent departure stalled, Rachel stretches down the bed again, and slowly, so slowly, moves closer. Seeing this, Rook rolls onto her back and makes the room for Rachel against her side, where she wraps that leg all the more securely around her hip and rests her cheek against Rook’s chest. Rook slips an arm around Rachel’s waist and encourages her closer.

The weight of her is comforting.

“Thank you for coming here,” Rachel whispers once her face is safely out of view, tucked beneath Rook’s chin. “I feel so stupid for asking you to.”

“You didn’t,” Rook reminds her. “And, I already told you, I’m glad that you did. You know you can call me anytime you need to, right? I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night, or the ass-crack of dawn. If you need me, I’ll make it happen.”

Rachel turns her face into Rook’s t-shirt and snorts.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Rook grins. “But, I mean it.”

“I know.”

When the room turns sufficiently silent, that she might just fall back asleep, Rook reaches an arm to the bedside table and checks her phone. It’s a little past 05:30 and there’s still twenty minutes on her alarm, it turns out. She turns it off, anyway, confident that she won’t be drifting back off to sleep. Against her chest, Rachel sighs and nuzzles closer, and Rook can’t say the same for her.

Now that she’s awake, her thoughts turn to the events of the night before.

“How often do they fight like this?” she asks, unable to help herself.

Rachel takes so long to respond that Rook almost thinks she won’t.

“Like this? Not often. But they’re always arguing. I think they want to divorce.”

Rook slips a hand into Rachel’s hair, combing her fingers gently through messy tresses so as to not tug on any knots. “Do you think they’ll get one?”

“And suffer their reputation?” Rachel asks, and her voice sounds bitter and unhappy and unlike herself. She shakes her head. “I doubt it. My mom never used to do this, though. They’d argue and my dad would sleep downstairs, or something, but now she’s started leaving.” She picks at Rook’s t-shirt, and Rook can hear the frown in her voice. “She just leaves me here with him.”

“She’s scared of him?”

“Yeah,” Rachel whispers.

“Are you?”

It’s so quiet that Rook worries she’s outspoken, outstayed her welcome.

“My dad would never hurt me, Rook,” Rachel says, as she had the night before, but her voice is monotone and unconvincing.

Rook doesn’t ask her any more questions, after that.

She holds Rachel and she finger-combs her hair, and she listens to her breathing even out until she’s sure Rachel really has fallen asleep, this time. She hates to move her. She doesn’t want to leave the warmth of Rachel’s bed, of Rachel’s body. She hates, especially, when she stretches her body out and Rachel wakes and slips from her, as if she knows it’s time.

Rook stretches again once she’s standing.

Her jeans are distinctly uncomfortable, and her hair is a mess.

She re-ties the ponytail into a bun and dips her face into Rachel’s vanity table mirror to finger-comb all the wayward strands of it back behind her ears. When she turns back to the bed, Rachel is watching her from her side, curled into the warm spot that Rook herself had left behind. Rook takes a seat by Rachel’s knees to pull her boots on.

“Do you want to come with me?” she asks, lacing the last one up.

Rachel takes an audible breath. “Yeah, but I should check on my dad.”

Rook wants to push the offer but, by some small grace of her self-restraint, doesn’t.

“Text me later, yeah?” she asks, instead, turning to see Rachel once her boots are tied. She looks far too inviting, lying there in the bed, that Rook wants nothing more than to kick her boots back off again and re-join her. “Let me know how you’re doing, or if you need anything.”

Beneath her, hair mussed in the pillow, Rachel smiles shyly.

“You’ve done enough, I promise.”

Rook shrugs but doesn’t press it.

When she stands and unlatches the window, she hears Rachel slip from the bed behind her. She’s already scaled the windowsill and is out on the trellis when Rachel whispers her name from inside. Rook turns, still crouched, to find Rachel half-leaning out of the window. She beckons her closer with a hand, and Rook is helpless to resist.

She moves close enough that Rachel can reach out to her, both hands on her cheeks, and pull her solidly in against her mouth.

There’s a pressure behind the kiss that has little to do with how fiercely Rachel is holding her.

It tastes too much like _thank you_ , that Rook swallows the sentiment down with more kisses.

When they part, Rachel’s eyes are wide, and her cheeks look soft and pink. They’re both just a little breathless. Rook takes a slow step back, putting a foot between them, an invisible barrier around her temptation that is, admittedly, already stretched thin. The rising sun and the morning’s growing visibility spike her anxiety at the thought of getting caught, and that’s all the urging she needs to halt further delays.

“Text me,” she says, plotting her route back to the ground.

Rachel captures her bottom lip between her teeth and nods.


	14. Chapter 14

“I can’t believe you’ve talked me into doing this.”

Rook looks up from the leaflet in her hand and is sure that she’s pouting, but can’t help it.

Opposite her, sipping water from Rook’s canteen, Rachel closes her eyes and shrugs her shoulders as though she can’t possibly imagine what Rook could mean. Rook shakes her head at her, smirking. Rachel may be a piece of work, but _God_ , if she doesn’t love it. She turns her attention back to the leaflet, and— well. Not all the time, anyway.

Disengaging from the canteen, Rachel gasps for breath and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“It’ll be fun,” she says, like it’s a given.

She hands the canteen back to Rook, and Rook swaps her, passing the leaflet over.

“I’ve never even _been_ to Summer Camp before,” she says.

“All the more reason for you to come with me,” Rachel sing-songs.

Rook takes a swig from her water, unconvinced.

The truth is, she has a hundred and one excuses on the tip of her tongue for why she shouldn’t, and doesn’t _want_ to, accompany Rachel in whatever youth-group programme she’s entered that means teaching Bible passages to kids, or whatever. She even considers exercising a few of them, just to see how Rachel will respond.

In the end, she decides to conserve her energy.

Rachel had smiled at her and batted her eyelashes, and that soft, swollen, tender thing that’s growing warm and bright inside Rook’s chest had given an almighty pulse, and that had been that. She’s putty in her hands, and Rachel knows it.

“I’m no good with kids,” Rook says, anyway, fastening the top on her canteen. “I’ve never done anything like this, either, and I don’t even know the Bible. I’m just not sure how much help I could be to you, is all I’m saying.”

“Plenty help,” Rachel insists. She stops picking at the grass and dusts loose stems from her hands. “It’s not like we need to really teach them anything. The church always gets involved in stuff like this – just little activities that help the community. It doesn’t have to be strictly religious.”

Rook makes an unconvinced face at that.

“Okay, so they might _want_ it to be, but _Silver Lake_ are way more relaxed. Last year, a bunch of us just did arts and crafts with the kids outside, and we got a whole cabin to ourselves.” Rachel’s gaze falters uncharacteristically. She picks at the grass like it’s a nervous habit, accumulating a small pile of it over her bare legs. “This year, seeing as it’d just be the two of us, we’d have the whole place to ourselves.”

Rook arches a brow at that.

Her mind draws back to their camping trip on the tiny island just out off the Marina.

They’d been sun-burned and bug-bitten, but Rook can’t deny it’d been one of her favourite days since coming to Hope County.

The way that Rachel looks at her, now, bashful beneath her lashes, makes her stomach flip in all too pleasant a way at the thought of what just the two of them could get up to with a cabin to themselves.

Rook quickly shakes herself.

She breathes audibly and wets her lips and tells herself to calm right back down again, because that’s surely not where Rachel’s thoughts are heading. Probably. Rook can never really tell, these days. She feels constantly on the verge of asking Rachel for something more, but on either side of that single question is a deep, engulfing abyss.

Like walking a tightrope above her fear of rejection, and Rook’s become stuck halfway.

She clears her thoughts when Rachel’s brow furrows, like she’s wondering what Rook’s thinking.

“Fine,” she says, and Rachel’s eyes light with surprise. “Don’t look at me like that, you were never in any doubt that you’d convinced me.”

Rachel laughs sweet and short and shrugs like she just can’t help herself.

“Can you pick me up in the morning?” she asks. “We can pick up snacks before we go.”

“ _Fine_.”

Rachel makes a giddy noise and pushes herself up.

All the grass that had accumulated over her legs falls back to the ground like powdered sugar, and then Rook’s being hugged. Tightly. Rachel squeezes her around the shoulders and wobbles them from side to side, until Rook’s laughing and hugging her back, and it’s stupid, really, how happy this girl makes her.

The entire display is interrupted seconds later by the calling of Rachel’s name from the top of the hill that they’re sitting on.

“Rachel?”

The arms around Rook drop in an instant.

They spring apart, and while Rook is telling herself and telling herself _again_ that they’ve done literally nothing wrong, her heart hammers inside her chest as she sets eyes on Mrs. Jessop. Rachel’s mother is watching them oddly. Beside her, Rachel recovers first, and sits back in the grass like nothing had happened.

(Nothing _had_ happened, Rook reminds herself. Her heart, hammering away inside her chest, refuses to listen.)

“Rook’s going to come to _Silver Lake Summer Camp_ with me next weekend,” Rachel says, loud enough for her mother to hear. “Won’t that be great?”

Mrs. Jessop’s gaze falls on Rook, again, and Rook feels herself turn at least a degree warmer.

She almost unscrews her canteen for another drink.

“I didn’t know you attended Rach’s little church group,” she says, not unkindly. She’s smiling in a way that conveys pleasant surprise at the latest turn of events, and Rook turns green.

“Uh, actually,” Rook croaks, wishing instantly that she hadn’t started speaking, “I don’t. I’ll just be there for moral support, more than anything.”

She feels awkward and silly and judged, despite the softening smile on Mrs. Jessop’s face.

“Well,” she says, and her expression turns conspiratorial, “I’m sure the Camp won’t mind, either way. They’re always looking for volunteers in the summer.” Rook nods her head in quiet agreement. Above them, still, Mrs. Jessop folds her arms against her chest and glances down the road that overlooks their house. When she comes back to herself, seconds later, her smile is forced. “Lunchtime is over in ten minutes, Rachel,” she reminds her daughter, and then turns on her heel.

Rook watches her departure with no small amount of unease.

Beside her, Rachel is frowning.

Rook bumps their shoulders together in the hopes of making her speak.

“She’s acting like nothing’s happened,” Rachel sighs, deflating, and Rook does not have to ask her what she means. She’s still not fully shaken the anxiety that being inside the Jessops’ house in the wake of their fight had instilled in her. “They’re still barely speaking.”

“I’m sorry,” Rook says, because she isn’t sure what else she can offer.

Rachel turns to her with a small, if sad, smile.

“Y _ou’ve_ got nothing to be sorry for.”

“Still.” Rook leans back on her hands, legs crossed. “Seems like it’s easier to have no parents than to have shitty ones.”

She looks out across the road, the same direction that Mrs. Jessop had been staring in, and frowns without meaning to.

Beside her, Rachel turns quiet and curious.

“You never speak about them,” she says, in a way that means she wouldn’t mind it, if Rook did.

Rook turns to her with a lopsided smirk.

“Nothing really to talk about,” she shrugs. If Rachel didn’t look so interested, if far too damn polite to voice her questions, she might just leave it there. “You know I was raised by my grandparents, right?” Rook throws out, and Rachel’s raising eyebrows tell her _no_ , actually, no she didn’t. Rook makes a small noise of surprise.

“You’ve never mentioned them, either,” Rachel says, and it sounds just a _touch_ accusatory.

Rook lifts a shoulder. “I’m sure I have.”

“You have not,” Rachel insists. She moves herself closer, giving Rook her undivided attention. “Tell me about them?”

Rook tilts her head to one side, so that the sun slips in beneath the rim of her cap, momentarily stinging her eyes.

“Alright,” she agrees, and Rachel makes an impatient gesture with her hands. Rook laughs at her and shakes her head. “But, we’ve gotta get back to work, so…”

She stands as Rachel’s mouth opens to protest.

“ _Rook_.”

“Come on,” Rook tells her, already walking backwards up the hill, “or your mom’ll come looking for you again.”

“ _You_ —” Rachel starts, and a strangled noise comes from somewhere in her throat. It’s followed quickly by a startled laugh. “You’re deflecting, I can’t believe it. I’m so holding you to this conversation, you know.”

Rook turns into a light jog up the rest of the incline.

“Can’t hear you, slowpoke!”

She’s utterly unprepared for how quickly Rachel catches up to her— or, just how good it feels when she bodily tackles Rook, arms wrapping around her from behind, failing miserably to actually knock her over.

(She definitely wouldn’t mind it if Rachel tried again.)


	15. Chapter 15

The following Saturday, Rook wakes up earlier than she’d prefer.

She pulls out clean underwear for the day and braves her trailer’s shower, which has recently begun to produce only cold water, and at a devastating trickle. By the time she’s out, again, it’s already warm enough that she partially air-dries with a towel wrapped around her body, sitting on her bed.

Three far too excited texts from Rachel greet her when she checks her phone, and Rook smiles despite the edge of uncertainty that’s been sitting in her gut since she agreed to this.

She sends Rachel a text back confirming that she’s both awake and preparing to set off soon.

Next, she turns to the mess that she’s made of her bed, and sighs.

Rook hadn’t come to Hope County with an extensive wardrobe. The majority of her clothes are either old or second-hand, and built to last. Her trousers are mainly jeans or old work pants – well-worn, convenient, and with the odd splash of camo that she’s not exactly proud of. Her tops, with the exception of few, are typically a size too large to protect her from the heat. There’s not a good dress shirt amongst them, but then, Rook’s never really had the need for one.

Instead of second guessing herself any longer, she plucks a t-shirt from the mess. It’s clean and it’s soft, and the material is breathable enough that she hopefully won’t be a sweaty mess for most of the day, as she’s admittedly grown accustomed to being. She throws a polo shirt to one side for tomorrow, and then a tank top for sleeping in. Finally, she pulls on a pair of jeans that she intends to wear for the duration of her stay.

It’s not like Rachel would expect anything else, she reasons with herself.

Along with her clothes, Rook shoves clean socks, underwear, and her portable phone charger in a gym bag and finds her toothbrush. Her wallet and car keys are shoved into her pockets, and with her phone in hand, she casts a last quick glance around her trailer and wonders if she’s forgetting anything.

She thinks, _probably_ , but it can’t be anything that she’d be in any desperate need for.

They’re only staying at the _Silver Lake Summer Camp_ for the night, after all.

 

By the time Rook leaves, still before 09:00, she spots Sharky emerging from the bins.

The little wooden trash cubicle is already overflowing with junk after a failed pick-up the week before, and it permeates the trailer park air with the subtle tinge of rancid garbage. Sharky appears either unaware of it, or far too accustomed. He lifts an entire arm in greeting and Rook nods him a hello.

“Beautiful mornin’, Rook.”

Rook’s lips twist. In all the time that she’s known Sharky Boshaw, this is the first that she’s seen him awake before lunch. He looks like he’s suffering for it, too, if the fatigue lines on his face are anything to judge by.

“I guess,” Rook agrees. She shoves her bag in the back of her truck as Sharky approaches. “Don’t tell me you’ve been up burning the midnight oil?”

“I absolutely have _not_ been up burning _anything_ in the woods illegally,” Sharky says, over-loud, casting several glances around the trailer park.

“No, it’s an express—”

 “Man, I don’t know _what_ you take me for— some kinda hooligan who sets shit on fire for fun? In the _woods_ – _Illegally_? Damn, Rook, I thought we were friends.”

He winks at her with both eyes, and Rook’s shoulders deflate, torn between laughter and a deep-seated bewilderment that happens upon her whenever she spends too much time with Sharky. She wonders what it says about her, sometimes, that she genuinely likes his company and considers him a good friend.

“I don’t know who keeps spreading these rumours about me.”

“I just can’t imagine,” Rook agrees, rolling her eyes at the charade.

Sharky digs her good-naturedly in the arm as he passes.

“You stink of smoke, by the way,” she shouts after him. “Your clothes are singed.”

Sharky turns to face her, walking backwards, and shrugs his arms wide as if to ask, _what ya gonna do?_

Rook nods her head in silent agreement.

She doubts she’ll ever have an answer to that one, where Sharky’s concerned.  

 

 

Rook arrives at the Jessops’ place in good time.

When nobody’s working, the Conservatory looks almost like a normal front yard – of a decidedly wealthy family, no doubt. Rook stops her truck outside and keeps the engine running, because Rachel had told her that she’d be right out, and Rook doesn’t much feel like lingering. She has music playing quietly, and taps her fingers to the beat against her steering wheel while she waits.

Seconds later, having heard her approach, Rachel appears at the door.

She looks far too eager, and it makes Rook smile.

Wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and an honest to god pair of sneakers, Rachel half-jogs to the truck and throws her bag in the back. She appears in the passenger’s side open window with a smile that threatens the sun, and Rook can’t help but lean across the space to open the door for her.

Rachel climbs inside with the sweet scent of her floral perfume, and buckles herself in.

“I’m so excited,” she beams, turning to Rook, in place of a greeting.

She has her hair tied back in a ponytail, revealing little studded earrings and a slender neck.

“Oh, yay, me too,” Rook deadpans, and Rachel slaps her on the arm with a scoff.

 “You’re going to have the time of your life, Rook, and don’t you dare forget it.”

“If you say so,” Rook manages through her laughter.

They turn together at the sound of the Jessops’ front door opening, revealing a lone Mrs. Jessop and a Tupperware box of concealed treats. She comes around to the nearest window, that being Rook’s, and hands the plastic container over. Rook takes it with no small amount of curiosity. She’d grabbed a piece of fruit for her breakfast, an on-the-go banana as she’d combed through her wet hair, and her stomach’s already aching for more.

“Just a little something for the trip,” Mrs. Jessop tells them, while Rook hands the container to Rachel.

“Thank you, Mrs. Jessop,” Rook grins, while Rachel takes a peek inside.

“ _Mom_ ,” she says upon revealing a stack of sugared cookies. She turns to Rook and adds, “These are my favourites.”

“You girls have a good time.” Mrs. Jessop takes a step away from feet-crushing distance, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun while the other pitches against her hip. She leaves the distinct impression that she’s not quite sure what to do with herself. “Drive safely.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Jessop waves them off from the top of the drive.

Rook wonders just how long she stands out there once they’ve travelled out of sight.

That melancholy thought sits with her until they’re back on the main road, and Rachel cracks open the lid of the plastic container again. She picks one sugar cookie from the rest and leans against the console between them, holding it out for Rook.

“Try this,” she says, and Rook casts it the briefest glance before indulging her.

Powdered sugar falls all over her lap and down her chin as she takes a bite, and Rook stops breathing when Rachel diligently follows its path with the tips of her fingers, brushing it free. When she leans back again, she takes a bite from the same cookie and makes a quiet noise of exaggerated pleasure, that Rook almost chokes on her own mouthful.

She swallows it down a little too quickly, just in case.

“It’s good, right?” Rachel asks her, fiddling with the radio, and Rook keeps her eyes pointedly focused on the road.

She’s sure she’s blushing, and without any real reason, either.

“Very,” she agrees, as Rachel takes another bite.

 

Rook stops the truck at the gas station closest to the _Silver Lake Summer Camp_.

Rachel hops outside and is halfway around the truck when Rook calls her over to her open window.

At Rachel’s curious expression, Rook slips a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet and hands it out for Rachel to take.

“Ah-uh, put your money away,” Rachel tells her, shaking her head. “I dragged you into this, the least I can do is buy our snacks.”

“That so?”

“Yep.”

“How about you take it, anyway, and buy more junk food than we could possibly eat in one night, and I’ll… make it up to you later.”

At that, Rachel’s eyes narrow.

“Make it up to me how?” she asks, eyeing the twenty dollar bill still outstretched in Rook’s hand.

“I’ll answer any question that you have about my _super secret_ and interesting past.”

Rachel eyes the bait with pursed lips.

“Any question?” she presses, and Rook’s smile widens.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Well, in that case…” She plucks the bill from Rook’s hand. “I’ll make sure to buy us _lots_ of sugary garbage that we can stay awake all night talking.”

Rook watches her go with a grin.

On the radio, a country love song twangs out of the aged speakers, and Rook turns the volume up – just because.

 

**Author's Note:**

> support is extremely appreciated. kudos/comments/bookmarks all mean the world to me - drop me a line if you can, even if it's short!


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